6 Things You Should Never Start Your Day With

Mornings should be only about you.

HIGHLIGHTS

Mornings are essentially the best time of the day.

Avoid smoking in the morning.

Never avoid stretching when you wake up.

Mornings are essentially the best time of the day. You are fresh and you look forward to a productive day at work. However, there are chances that you wake up to a bad dream, or a day at work with too many plans and meetings, or a bad hangover from previous night's over drinking. But whatever be the case, there are some things which can further ruin your day and should be completely avoided. Here's a don't-do list for all of you to have a day better than you thought it to be:

1. Drinking coffee

While nothing beats the smell of coffee in the morning, your body actually doesn't need coffee until several hours after you wake up. Your body begins pumping cortisol when you wake up in the morning, which is like a smelling salt that helps you rise and shine. Drinking coffee first thing in the morning is like adding lighter fluid to an already-growing fire.

2. Avoid smoking

Morning time is the time of freshest air. In all circumstances, one must avoid lighting a cigarette first thing in the morning. Smoking harms your health, no matter what time of day you smoke. But if cigarettes are part of your morning routine, the risks are even greater. Scientists from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Penn State College of Medicine have found that people who smoke soon after waking may put themselves at higher risk of cancer than other smokers.

3. Hitting the snooze button

"Hitting the snooze button is frequently a sign that you are not getting enough sleep," says Robert Rosenberg, author of 'Sleep Soundly Every Night, Feel Fantastic Every Day'. He adds, "But it may also be a sign of 'social jet lag,' a condition where you are staying up too late on weekends and then because of the sleep debt you have built up, you need more sleep on work days." When you hit snooze, you disrupt your sleep cycles and you end up sleepier than if you had gotten up in the first place. You also scramble your internal circadian clock, which tells you when to sleep and when to wake. This makes it even harder to get up when your alarm rings.

4. Avoiding exercise

Exercising at any time of the day is better than not exercising at all. But if you can exercise in the morning, you may be doing your body a day-long favour. Numerous researches have stated that those who exercise in the morning appear to have lower blood pressure throughout the day and they get better sleep as compared to those who work out in evening.

5. Eating a carb-heavy breakfast

Eating breakfast which is rich in carbohydrates may be robbing yourself of the energy you need to get through the day. "Empty carbs give you energy, but it can be short-lived," says Isabel Maples, R.D., a spokesperson for the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Once those carbs are digested, they send your blood sugar crashing down and you're likely to feel sleepy and hungry well before lunch.

6. Forgetting to stretch

If you've ever felt stiff in the morning, it's not just you. Over the night, muscles and joints can stiffen as they 'sleep' right along with you. If you just try to hop out of bed, you may feel muscle twinges where you didn't know you had muscles.